Climate Futures analyses the social, political, economic and psychological consequences of climate change describing how different global responses could lead to five very different worlds by 2030.
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Climate Futures analyses the social, political, economic and psychological consequences of climate change and describes how different global responses to the problem could lead to five very different worlds by 2030.
Download Climate Futures here (6.7MB pdf)
Read the Green Futures feature 'New Year's Day 2030' here
Studies of climate change often focus on the direct environmental impacts of a changing climate. Climate Futures was designed to look as broadly as possible and consider the human dimensions of climate change as well as the environmental ones. The project aimed to provide a powerful set of scenarios – plausible, coherent future worlds - for businesses to plan their strategic response to a changing world and to provoke debate about the sort of world we want to see.
Climate Futures was developed in collaboration with researchers from Hewlett Packard Labs, and the project led the company to set up a new sustainable innovation team.
Pierre Delforge, manager of Energy and Climate Strategy, HP, said: “The Climate Futures scenario work is a key tool to help visualise how the world, society and markets may evolve as regards customer needs and behaviours, policy regulations, cost of energy and commodities, and technology innovations”.
Chandrakant Patel, Director of HP’s Sustainable IT Ecosystem Lab, said: “We are using Climate Futures in our work with business strategists throughout the company. The research behind it contributed to our decision this year to make sustainability one of the five areas of focus for HP Labs and launch the Sustainable IT Ecosystem Laboratory".
The scenarios are being used by a number of organisations. Unilever has built them into a sustainability training programme and a design consultancy in New Zealand is using them to promote sustainable innovation.
Forum is also using them as a basis for further work. Fit for the Future is designed to help the UK National Health Service understand how it can become a low-carbon healthcare provider.
Scenarios:
Efficiency First
Rapid innovation in energy efficiency technologies has created a consumerist, low-carbon world. Yet society balances precariously on a fine point, with ever-increasing reliance on new innovations to mitigate continuing climate change. Massive desalination plants in the Middle East and North Africa soak up energy from the sun to irrigate the desert for resource production. Wilderness exists only in a few pockets of the world.
Service Transformation
High carbon prices have resulted in businesses rethinking their models and selling services rather than products. Individual car ownership is prohibitive but the public transport system is highly efficient. Collective laundry services have replaced washing machines. A 'share with your neighbour' ethos exists and global carbon emissions decline for the first year in history
Redefining Progress
People are rethinking what it means to lead a fulfilling life. Meaningful jobs are valued and stronger links with local communities are cultivated. People are attracted to simplicity and focus much more on quality of life than economic prosperity. Climate change is well understood and viewed as one part of unsustainable living.
Environmental War Economy
Governments have left it late to deal with climate change and have been forced to rationalise whole industry sectors and take control of many aspects of citizens' lives. They build dams and powerful sea wall defences to protect land from the raging oceans, yet growing numbers of environmental refugees must find new countries willing to accommodate them. Greenhouse gases are beginning to decline, but the cost to individual liberty has been great.
Protectionist World
The world is divided into protectionist blocs, and countries wage violent wars over scarce resources like water. Communities are divided and cyber-terrorists take advantage of the flux, paralysing communications networks and targeting collapsed states.
Contact: James Goodman
Links
Reuters, Exotic climate study sees refugees in Antartica, 13 October 2008
The Daily Telegraph, Climate change study predicts refugees fleeing into Antarctica,13 October 2008
The Sydney Morning Herald, From energy efficiency to war: thinktank sees 2030 climate future, 13 October 2008
Business Green, Businesses urged to follow Schwarzenegger's lead or face disaster, 13 October 2008
Mint, Future grim if emissions unchecked, warns report, 14 October 2008
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Comments
The real threat is ourselves, it is almost already too late to prevent a future disaster there are at present no realistic solutions to halt the greenhose effect alone, without considering the other pollution threats, there are too many people on this planet at present to be truly sustainable at current consumption rates, and that is without the consideration that we are living longer! - most of the suggested solutions need a GLOBAL commitment, ALL nations. and the problem is that most solutions would "cool" the hottest areas, it is the ice caps which need conserving to avoid a GLOBAL FLOOD. more trees and greenery may help, or even create artificial "trees", or even cloud modification. but it will have to be an attempt on both reduction in population and technical issues in all countries.
More hopium, this study refuses to acknowledge key factors in our contribution and ongoing decline and why we will fail.
Economic based 'solutions' are invariably predatory and will always lead to the same decline in a finite world. The notion that we will restrain ourselves, acting ethically and morally on a global scale is actually quite absurd.
This report simply discusses how to slice-and-dice what resources remain, with an emphasis on how humans might benefit the most from their past mistakes.
But it offers no solutions at all, just more of the same and fails miserably to accurately asses the reality of what the future holds.
None of the authors seem to even understand what "sustainable" actually means either, using the term incorrectly throughout. Non-renewable resources removed from the planet are not sustainable. Nor are transported renewable resources using fossil energy.
Civilization as we know it today (and all that goes with it) simply isn't "sustainable" at all and never, ever will be. The only sustainable civilization is one where we remove the notion of 'economy' from our way of life.
There is no discussion in this or any other 'think tank' assessment of a true sustainable civilization. Economics drives these so-called 'studies' and how humans may continued to exploit the planet for their private use.
By the time Washington does something meaningful on Global Warming it may be too late for a stable climate. They would have to do a radical shift from coal and oil to solar and nuclear...which has a bad name now because of the Japanese disaster. Then you have the Republicans and the big money interests......this will be a big challenge for the young people of today! The people of my generation seem to be in slow motion on this one!
Hello, I am a Stanley park student. I think that global warming can affect us in many ways. I can already see how people in our society do not help to stop global warming by not recycling and polluting the water body. What they don't realize is that global warming is the next disaster on planet earth if we do not change. Things you can do to help is RECYCLE. You can recycle things such a water bottle(not the caps, those go in the garbage) and recycle books and paper. Also STOP POLLUTION; pollution is the main cause of destruction on earth because with all the trash on the side of the road or sewage dumps by the factories and also acid rain . All this affect the world, so we can change. Im just a concerned Z.B Vance High School Student.
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Hi folks,
Well, the earth has given humans (in most regions) everything we need to survive & prosper. And prosper we have! Now we are starting to see the price of prosperity, but many can't conceive giving up anything to maintain the resources they have. So wasteful, yet convinced there will always be "more", and it should always cost less. "I've got a newer cell phone & computer to brag to my friends about, and the mall!" Being in my mid-50's, i'm sure to be considered "old fashioned", but i consider it wiser. I can't condemn mans' genius & innovation which was the industrial revolution. But we know now that it did come at a price. Acid rain, deforestation, unhealthy air & water, and the effects are as real as what caused them. I truly feel that civilization will be put to the test in the coming decades & perhaps centuries, should we last that long. Lets' face it. Global effects are big ones! Now we have what we've made, and we can't stick our heads in the ground to make it go away! Answers? Our planet will "take care" of things. Humans only talk about it.
Hello, I am a Vance High School student. I think that global warming can affect us in many ways. I can already see how people in our society do not help to stop global warming by not recycling and polluting the water body. What they don't realize is that global warming is the next disaster on planet earth if we do not change. Things you can do to help is RECYCLE. You can recycle things such a water bottle(not the caps, those go in the garbage) and recycle books and paper. Also STOP POLLUTION; pollution is the main cause of destruction on earth because with all the trash on the side of the road or sewage dumps by the factories and also acid rain . All this affect the world, so we can change. Im just a concerned Z.B Vance High School Student.
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